Three Weeks at home... already!?!

(Grad dress... a bit better pic of it, although

still not my fave cuz it puckers in an awkward spot, but owell.)

The title for this post was originally "two weeks home..." and this week just flew by without taking time to sit and type. My original plans for tonight and tomorrow changed, so I have some time now to sit and think about how to write one last post.

ooh, wow... I just got this tinge of saddness wave over me... the same one I had when I finally purchased my cell phone on thursday. It's these steps that make the experience more and more distant. It's still hard to put into words... it's like closure is happening and I want it, but don't want it.

Closure seems like the wrong word because of the finality of it, but really I am ending the YWAM part of my life... or the DTS part of my life. I don't know if I'll join with YWAM again, but really once a YWAMer always a YWAMer whether I'm active or not. So... yes.... closure... the end... BUT a new beginning as well.... so..... here we go.... I am going to give you my promised "update" from a couple days at the end that I didn't really follow up with... sorta seems silly at this point, but owell... maybe it will help me continue to the "closure"... haha.

Okay... So, that last week... on tues and wed. morning my outreach team ate breakfast together... the same kind we'd have when we were in Czech, dark breads, fruit, veggies, and yummy coffee... it was fun to come together again after our aussie outreach and have fun together. Wednesday afternoon/evening my small group met one last time and made chocolate cookies together. We ate cookie dough and laughed and just had a good time with each other... then at dinner we ate together in the community room and ate the freshly baked cookies... we talked and reminisced of our fun times over the last months. One thing is for sure, our small group really knew how to have fun and laugh with each other!

Mary-Kate and I.... Jules and Kayti... mmm... coooookie dough....


This is a picture taken from Mt. Cootha, a look-out over Brisbane. We came here as a school on thursday night as one last "hurrah"... or just one last outing and fun time as a school... just the school, no parents or staff/students who weren't involved in MAD. It was fun, except we had to go in two different groups, and we weren't altogether for the whole time. Following the time at the look-out we had a "dance party" and then a slide-show and some songs that some of the musicians had planned to perform during graduation. Although, there were too many apparently and it had to be cut out, so they played them for us on this night instead.

Up at Mt. Cootha.. (upper) me and Hannah-Claire... (lower) me and Laura!



Me with some wonderful "staff"/friends(upper).... (lower) laura, senja (j=y), Pauliina and Heikki

hmmm... what else... i think that's kind of it... oh, maybe briefly share about AFTER graduation. Well, the big thing was to go out to a "chill-club/bar" and have drinks and dance, if that was your thing. The info we got on this club was that it wasn't your typical dance-club techno packed type place. The thing we forgot about was that it was ANZAC day, which is like our memorial day. Everyone was out that night and partying because, well.. it was a holiday. Needless to say, it wasn't the "cool chilled out" place we thought. I actually went to this coffee shop called "The 3 Monkeys" before going to the club, which was nice to relax. Although, when we decided to meet up with the others at the bar, they were done with the club because it wasn't what they were expecting. The groups were going in different directions, one to the coffee place again and another to a place called "the valley." I decided to go to the valley, in which there were bars with dancing, etc. It was an adventure that normally isn't my "ideal scene" but fun none-the-less to do something out of the ordinary. I mean, come on, it was my last couple nights in the great land of Australia, I had to live it up! And, I did... ordered a white russian and was appalled by the price tag! Shouldn't have been a shocker though, when the cheapest beer in the city was $6/7! What ya gonna do? owell... I've got a story tell! :)
We found the cheapest deal in Brisbane though, a 1/4 slice of pizza for only 3bucks!! Now that, was shocking... i s'pose it's good business, keeping the drunks fed! haha... and the poor ywam missionaries! hahaha